


When Keeping Moving Gets You Where You Need to Go

by alice_pike



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-04
Updated: 2013-06-04
Packaged: 2017-12-14 00:08:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alice_pike/pseuds/alice_pike
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Jessica had been dead for over two weeks and I didn't know how much longer I should grieve.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Keeping Moving Gets You Where You Need to Go

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this almost five years ago for a school assignment, of all things; re-watching season one, I found it again, and I'm posting it here for posterity, and because what the hell. (The assignment was to write a piece of fiction in the style of Raymond Carver. It's been almost five years since I've read anything by Carver, so I'll leave it up to others whether or not I succeeded).

Jessica had been dead for over two weeks and I didn't know how much longer I should grieve.

My brother and I, we packed up after a month and moved out. He drove, his fingers stiff on the steering wheel, like they wanted to reach out to me instead. I slept sometimes, but sometimes the nightmares were so vivid that I was afraid to close my eyes.

"Hey," he said, after a couple hundred miles had passed without conversation. "How're ya' doing?" he said, like he didn't already know.

I kept my eyes on the road. He kept looking at me and I kept trying to ignore it. He shifted in his seat and looked back out of the windshield. I watched his fingers tapping against the wheel in time to the music. The silence stretched on like the road.

 

It was right outside of Poverty Point, Louisiana, that I saw her on the side of the road. She was dressed in white, gold hair falling over her shoulders, blood still dripping from the gash in her abdomen.

I didn't fall back asleep for days, after that.

 

Dean picked up newspapers abandoned in diners and flipped through them with a trained eye, sparing me an occasional glance. I took a sip of black coffee from a chipped white mug and my eyes watered as it burned my mouth. 

Dean looked up at me. "How about this one?" he said, and pointed at an article about a man who disappeared from a stretch of highway, the fourth one this year. He said, "How about it?"

I glanced at the article. It had nothing to do with Jessica's killer. It had nothing to do with what we left behind in Palo Alto. I glanced at Dean. His eyebrows were raised; he was waiting for a response. 

It was like he didn't care that we were no closer than we were two months ago. It was like he didn't care that whatever killed Jessica was still out there, probably still killing. It was like he didn't care, and Jesus, he _should_ care. It killed his mother, too, after all.

I slid to the edge of the bench and pushed myself out as I rose to my feet. Dean followed my movements with his eyes and after a moment seemed to notice my tense shoulders and pursed lips. He looked back down at the paper, skimming fitfully over the classifieds to get to the obituaries.

My sneaker skidded on the Formica floor as I walked to the door of the diner.

 

Three months after she had been killed, the nightmares hadn't stopped; they were just about different things. It was still on my mind, of course, but I could hide it from my brother. That was the important thing. If he didn't know about it I wouldn't have to visit it, and that was the important thing.

I wasn't grieving anymore, but I still wasn't sure if I was supposed to be.

 

Dean drove straight through the night on the 101 on the way to Brisbane, as if he thought being closer to Palo Alto would make it worse.

He didn't have to know that it did.

I confronted him about it the next morning anyway. "We can't just run away from our problems," I said.

"'M not runnin' away from nothing," he said. 

I let out a breath through my nose.

He said, "I'm gettin' closer."

His logic was like that; it always had been. I just hadn't understood it until then.

 

I slept soundly that night. The next time Jessica came to me, she smiled before fading into a cloud of smoke and bright light.


End file.
